Is the American Dream alive in New Jersey 2026

A study came out recently that made me put my coffee down. I was on my second cup.

Researchers at DuelBits evaluated all fifty states on education, salary, life expectancy, diversity, home ownership and debt to determine where the American Dream is most achievable. New Jersey scored 8.72 out of 10. Number one in the country. Ahead of Massachusetts. Ahead of Connecticut. Ahead of every state in the union.

I read it twice.

Not because I doubted it — the data is solid. Over 43 percent of New Jersey residents hold a college degree. The average salary is $76,321. Life expectancy is 79. We have 917 cars for every thousand people and one of the most diverse populations on Earth, with 25 percent of residents born in other countries. By the metrics that define upward mobility and opportunity, New Jersey is the top of the list.

And yet.

I have spent most of this year writing about how expensive it is to live here. Property taxes that are the highest in the nation. A cost of living 12 percent above the national average. A family of four needing $6,104 a month just to cover the basics — before college savings, before retirement, before anything that feels like living rather than surviving. I have gotten more reader mail on those pieces than almost anything else I have written.

So which is it? Is New Jersey the best state in America — or the state that is slowly pricing its own people out?

New Jersey is the Mercedes of states

Both things are true. That is the answer and it is not a comfortable one.

New Jersey is expensive the way a Mercedes is expensive. You are not paying for nothing. You are paying for the best schools in the country, proximity to two of the world's greatest cities, a coastline that has been the backdrop of a million family memories, infrastructure that — frustrating as it is — moves more people more efficiently than almost anywhere else in America, and a job market that still delivers opportunities most states cannot match.

If you can afford the Mercedes, it is an extraordinary car.

The problem is that the sticker price keeps going up while the trade-in value of everything else — your salary, your savings, your sense that the next generation will have it better — keeps going sideways. Familiarity breeds contempt, and when you have been paying New Jersey prices your whole life, you stop seeing what you are getting and only feel what you are giving.

What my grandfather Mike understood that we forgot

My mother's father came from Enna, Sicily in the 1910s. His name was Mike. He settled in Mays Landing and spent his working life at the factory directly across the street from his home — first when it was a cotton mill, then when it converted to plastics in 1949. He stayed through that transition without complaint. He built something here. He raised a family here.

He was not alone. New Jersey's 25 percent foreign-born population is not an accident. People from all over the world looked at New Jersey and saw exactly what Mike saw — opportunity. They still do. The ones arriving now are not coming here despite the cost. They are coming because of what the cost buys.

The ones who grew up here — whose parents and grandparents already made it — are the ones most likely to feel like the price has become too high. That is not ingratitude. That is a real generational squeeze. The American Dream your grandparents built here was constructed at a different price point. Passing it down intact has gotten harder every decade.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder too. The people who left New Jersey — and we lose thousands every year — tend to remember it with a specific longing that people still here rarely feel. They miss the pizza. They miss the Shore. They miss the density and the attitude and the way things work here that you cannot fully explain to someone who has never lived it. The data that says New Jersey is number one for the American Dream? The people who left already knew that. They just could not afford to stay for the proof.

The number that explains everything

Here is the number worth sitting with: New Jersey's average salary is $76,321. The cost of living is 12 percent above the national average. A family of four needs $6,104 a month for the basics.

That math works — barely — if both parents are working, nobody gets sick, the car does not break down and the property tax bill does not go up again this year. It works until it does not. And when it stops working, the people it stops working for do not stay to complain. They leave. And then they miss it.

New Jersey is the best state in America for the American Dream. It is also one of the hardest states in America to afford the life that dream describes. Both of those things are true at the same time, in the same zip codes, for people sitting at the same kitchen tables.

That is not a contradiction. That is New Jersey.